Month: May 2013

Many, many years ago, I started to play the banjo with a college group, “The Catfish Dinner Singers” (a very creative name as we played for a university wide fish fry and didn’t have a name for the group). While I never felt I ever mastered it, my interest in the instrument has never waned. As you can see by today’s post, Jens Kruger is a true virtuoso and admired worldwide. The post yesterday was a sample of his genius. Today you can listen to Bach . . . Amazing isn’t he. Be well, Bill

As many of you know I am with M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX and wanted to share this wonderful video with you.

We are approaching “Cancer Survivorship Week” June 1-8, 2013 These words are the chorus of the original song “Hold On, ” written and performed by Greg Lizee, Ph.D., associate professor in MD Anderson’s Melanoma Medical Oncology department. The song’s message is simple: Hope. It’s about positivity, patience and faith — faith that things will get better. You have to hold on through the bad times to reach the good.

The song is dedicated to cancer survivors, anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer, from the time of diagnosis and treatment through the remaining years of life, as well as family members and caregivers who have been affected by the diagnosis. According to the American Cancer Society, there are now more than 13.7 million cancer survivors in the United States, and each one had to hold on during their cancer journey in order for things to get better.

We’ve all had them, those moments when we’re reminded just why it is that we love what we do. I’ve experienced this frequently recently with my return to teaching over the last few months and most often when I’m with my son. I think it must be what Joseph Campbell meant when he referred to bliss. Follow your bliss was his mantra and I made it mine too.

When we find our bliss we find what we love, we connect with it at a deep level, and through it we experience more of ourselves just as we also let go of any fears or doubts. We might even get that sense of understanding why it is we are here in the first place. It’s this bliss, this love, that transforms what we do, that gives it a value that is at once deeply personal, while also shared by those who…

“To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand.” ~ Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity

“That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.” ~ William Wordsworth

Life on earth is a whole, yet it expresses itself in unique time-bound bodies, microscopic or visible, plant or animal, extinct or living. So there can be no one place to be. There can be no one way to be, no one way to practice, no one way to learn, no one way to love, no one way to grow or to heal, no one way to live, no one way to feel, no one thing to know or be known. The particulars count.” ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life